Project on dyslexia wins India leg of Microsoft’s Imagine Cup

D.N.I.S. News Network, India: A project by students of Birla Institute of Technology (B.I.T.), Mesra, Ranchi that provides technology accessibility to children with dyslexia in a fun, easy to use and interactive manner has won the India leg of the 10th Imagine Cup 2012.

The Imagine Cup is the World’s premier student technology competition organised by Microsoft. It is a global competition that provides students an opportunity to use their creativity, passion and knowledge of technology to help solve global challenges. The competition begins with local, regional and online contests, followed by screening of best projects from each country participating at the global finals.

The D Labs, as the B.I.T. team calls itself, won from over 50,000 students from colleges across India. They will now represent the country at the global finals in Sydney in July. They also won in the accessibility category.

Besides The D Labs team, there were three other teams that submitted projects on accessibility solutions. While the team from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.), Kanpur worked on a project that uses Microsoft’s Speech Application Programming Interface to enable a person to use a computer without the use of hands, another team from Anna University, Tiruchirapali used Kinect technology to build a Sign Language Translator which converts a user’s sign to a word and gives an output on a suitable interface.

The runner-up in the Accessibility category was a team from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar who came up with a motor rehabilitation solution using Kinect motion sensing technology to help in rehabilitation of persons with physical impairments.